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Just prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.1, a new feature was
added to allow the display of "splash" screens during
the boot messages. The splash screens currently must be a 256
color bitmap (*.BMP) or ZSoft PCX
(*.PCX) file. In addition, they must have a
resolution of 320x200 or less to work on standard VGA adapters.
If you compile VESA support into your kernel, then you can use
larger bitmaps up to 1024x768. Note that VESA support requires
the VM86 kernel option to be compiled into the
kernel. The actual VESA support can either be compiled directly
into the kernel with the VESA kernel config option
or by loading the VESA kld module during bootup.

To use a splash screen, you need to modify the startup files
that control the boot process for FreeBSD. The files for this
changed prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.2, so there are now
two ways of loading a splash screen:

FreeBSD 3.1

The first step is to find a bitmap version of your splash
screen. Release 3.1 only supports Windows bitmap splash
screens. Once you've found your splash screen of choice
copy it to /boot/splash.bmp. Next, you need to
have a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the
following lines:

In addition to adding support for PCX splash screens,
FreeBSD 3.2 includes a nicer way of configuring the boot
process. If you wish, you can use the method listed above
for FreeBSD 3.1. If you do and you want to use PCX, replace
splash_bmp with splash_pcx. If,
on the other hand, you want to use the newer boot
configuration, you need to create a
/boot/loader.rc file that contains the
following lines:

include /boot/loader.4th
start

and a /boot/loader.conf that contains the
following:

splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"

This assumes you are using /boot/splash.bmp
for your splash screen. If you'd rather use a PCX file,
copy it to /boot/splash.pcx, create a
/boot/loader.rc as instructed above, and
create a /boot/loader.conf that contains:

The current version of splash_bmp.ko is very limited.
The color depth must be 8 bpp (256 color), and the size
must be 320x200 or smaller if the VESA support is not
included in the kernel. If your BMP file doesn't satisfy
these conditions, splash_bmp.ko will return error 19
(ENODEV). If the VESA support is compiled into the kernel
or the VESA module is preloaded by the boot loader,
a larger bitmap may be used.

A:

Your video card may not support a video mode with a high
enough resolution to display the image. Some video
adapters' BIOS require an extra software driver to be
loaded before they fully support VESA modes. If you have
one of these cards, then you will not be able to load
images larger than 320x200.

To see what video modes your video adapter supports, use
the vidcontrol utility:

vidcontrol -i mode

To get the resolutions of the modes supported by adapter
that the splash screen modules can use, use this slightly
longer command:

To save loading time for those of you without a T3 plugged into
the back of your computer, only a thumbnail is shown for each
splash screen on the main page. To see the full splash screen,
click on the thumbnail. Also, I'm only storing the bitmap
version of the splash screens so that everyone can use them.
You can always convert it to PCX if you wish to use the PCX
splash screen loader.

Contributed by:
William "Bill" LloydComments: Started out with the logo from the FreeBSD
website and added some text to commemorate
the release of FreeBSD 3.1.File:logo-31.bmp (320x200)

Contributed by:
John BaldwinComments: Uses picture of Mars from NASA's
NSSDC photo gallery. Credit for this
picture belongs to David Crisp and the
WFPC2 Science Team (Jet Propulsion
Laboratory/California Institute of
Technology) who used the Hubble telescope
to snag this shot. I just used the GIMP to
add some quick text.File:mars-31.bmp (320x200)

Contributed by:
Adam SerediukComments: Some images of Chuck together with some
text added in the GIMP to commemorate the
3.1-stable branch.File:dual_chuck-31.bmp
(640x480)

Contributed by:
Adam SerediukComments: Some images of Chuck together with some
text added in the GIMP to commemorate the
4.0-current branch.File:dual_chuck-40.bmp
(640x480)

Contributed by:
Stefan "Sec" ZehlComments: Logo for a German computer system. The
author plans to remove the system specific
text in the future.File:
kommsrvlogo.bmp (320x200)

Contributed by:
Charles HenrichComments: A frame from the sci-fi movie Matrix
along with some text and a power logo. The
special effects for the movie were generated on
machines powered by FreeBSD.File:bsd_matrix.bmp (640x480)

To submit new splash screens, simply send me an e-mail with it
attached or with an URL that I can get the picture from along
with a short comment telling me who created it, what changes you
made, etc. Any suggestions, comments, updates, etc. should be
sent to me as well. Thanks and I hope you enjoy this gallery of
splash screens.